The present invention relates generally to self-checkouts, checkouts, scan portals and pay station environments, and more particularly to improved systems and methods for arranged attendant work stations.
In a retail type environment, the efficiency with which consumers are able to process, pay for and purchase their desired items factors into the expenses for a retail type establishment. The labor hours attributable to manning checkout counters contribute greatly to this expense. Therefore, quickly processing transactions with minimal attendants needed at open checkouts, resulting in high throughput at the checkout, increases productivity and helps manage such overhead expenses.
Efforts to improve the traditional checkout, self-checkout, and hybrid checkout scenarios are being created, where technologies such as scan tunnels and paystations create a checkout that is not the traditional fully attended checkout and is not the unattended checkout. Scan tunnel technology has been introduced that allows the consumer to place the items to be purchased on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt carries the items through a scan tunnel that automatically scans the items, relieving the consumer and/or attendant of this responsibility. Consumers no longer need to scan each item and attendants are freed up to assist with bagging the purchased items and attending to exceptions occurring during the checkout process. While attendants in this scenario no longer have to scan each of the items, they are faced with processing a transaction at a much quicker pace and must efficiently scan exception items that did not enter the transaction correctly, interact with a display chronicling the transaction and bag the items.
In one example, centralized pay stations allow consumers to swiftly move through a transaction at a checkout and then for several checkout stations to be serviced by one pay station. One attendant can manage the pay station, freeing other attendants to focus on bagging and exception scanning and handling. While these advancements in checkout stations increase speed and throughput, Applicant foresees that other challenges are being created or intensified by the developing check-out environments, such as the hybrid checkout stations.
Attendant's responsibilities in scan tunnel (also known as “portal scanner”) scenarios involve two major functions: 1) bagging items and 2) handling exceptions. These functions will occur rapidly and in higher volume during most transactions than previously experienced with more traditional checkouts and hybrid self-checkouts. Traditionally, brick-and-mortar retail transactions do not require front-end store employees to multi-task with the speed and in the manner described above for the scan tunnel scenario. The hybrid checkout places both the consumer and attendant into new roles at the checkout. One consistent factor though in all checkouts is that the attendant is faced with bagging and scanning responsibilities in some fashion. The focus in developing checkouts is on transaction efficiency, more advanced checkouts that process a portion of the transaction, and the speed with which attendants assist customers to keep a quicker customer flow through at the checkouts.
While the checkout stands are advancing for quicker checkout and efficiency, much less attention is given to the repetitive motions required of the attendants or the increased demand placed on attendants as they focus more on the same types of movements in often very uncomfortable and awkward positions. Even when the ergonomics of the checkout stand are considered, they are often skewed toward one body type that may make movements even more uncomfortable for other body-types, for example, shorter reach, taller height, and/or males and females. Applicant's inventions address these and other challenges in the art and are directed to a new method and system for improving the attendant work station at checkout terminals, for example, traditional checkout and hybrid checkout terminals.
Other developing systems have a scanner placed at a 90-degree or right angle in relation to the conveyor belt's direction of transport consistent with many traditional checkout systems. This means that attendants for those systems are forced to move in a more mechanical and unnatural way. In addition, they must move around in a significantly larger area, because reach requirements are greater with a scanner/scale that is in a right-angle position.